3 Reasons Why Immigrants are Good for Growth

According to Ian Goldin, a University of Oxford staff, researches have shown that immigrants have helped improved the host country’s economy. Another study conducted in the UK last year has shown that from 1995 to 2011, immigrants from the EU have contributed more in paying taxes compared to getting government benefits.

A lot of people in host countries aren’t keen about immigration reforms in their respective countries that they overlook the contributions of immigrants to their country. Below are 3 reasons why immigrants are vital to the economy of host countries.

Immigrants are bold.

It requires a great amount of courage to leave your country and go to another country to seek greener pastures. Although such countries as the USA, Canada, and countries in Europe are the land of opportunity, the price they pay is that they have to leave their loved ones and friends. At the same time, these immigrants don’t migrate to procrastinate and fail, they come to these countries to succeed as much as possible with their work. As they migrate, they will take risks and help their host country by thinking out-of-the-box.

Immigrants are entrepreneurs.

About 40% of the 500 companies presented by Fortune was built by immigrants or their families. If they hadn’t come to America, the country’s business scenery might not be what it is today. Big companies like Apple, which were founded by a Syrian descent Steve Jobs, Google by Sergey Brin whose family is from Russia, Yahoo with its co-founder Jerry Yang who is from Taiwan and online giant eBay founded by Pierre Omidyar whose family is from France have one thing in common, and that is they have immigrant roots. Other big companies that were started by immigrants or their family include, DuPont, Budweiser, Pfizer, AT&T, and Nordstrom. These companies have great market values and if their founders hadn’t come to America then they wouldn’t have much shared their market values to the country.

Immigrants create jobs.

Small businesses created by immigrants, in turn, have also created jobs, employing people on the local level. Many of these businesses are family-operated that eventually expand. The dominant figure is that about a quarter of jobs from the private sector have been started from small businesses. It is also good to remember that employees, as well as owners of these businesses, spend money on their communities thereby contributing to the local economy.